This Is...

This is... is a newly formed brand/collective that I am part of. It aims to make Bournemouth a more culturally interesting town to be in by putting on events, competitions and collaborative projects and other things which serve to draw together people from Bournemouth's present but dissolute creative community.

It is just starting to take off at the moment, with our awesome website designed by Richard Moody having just gone live, the first brief for our themed monthly exhibition being released and a Stencil piece, designed by myself, being spray painted on the wall at 60 million postcards, the brilliant venue for the event, to advertise an upcoming competition. 

Above : stencil being applied, and original stencil design developed from sketches which was scanned, vectorised and subsequently laser cut from card to create the stencil. 

Don't Blame Me, Blame Jack Black.

On Saturday I was lucky enough to see the brilliant film 'The Town'. Directed and lead by Ben Affleck, it revolves around the story of Affleck's group of professional bank robbers in the Boston neighbourhood of Charlestown, an infamous haven for this trade. This taut, multi-faceted thriller was however, had the impact of one of its most tense and engaging scenes destroyed by me, or to be more precise my phone ringing.


I rifled through my bag, mortified, for what seemed like forever. Luckily the film quickly reabsorbed us and thus was good enough not to be ruined by one spoiled scene.


However, after the film had finished, my thoughts returned to my faux pas and how usually, I am reminded by those Orange ads to not let my phone ruin the movie and swiftly silence it. I realised however that there had been one of these ads, but why didn't it prompt the usual response?

The ad in question is a kind of pseudo trailer for the upcoming version of Gulliver's Travels starring Black and quite clearly states at the end to turn off your phone as in previous Orange ads. 


However, where the previous ads with the irritating executives hellbent on ruining the scripts and ideas of a host of excited Hollywood figures were clearly distinguished from the block of trailers played either side of them, This ad was not as it starts off as a very plausible and exciting trail and fades into a comedy featuring the striking visual of a humongous Jack Black being strung up like a puppet by tiny people, which I feel somewhat distracts from the central message- there is too much noise.

This is part of a wider situation, with many brands creating adverts that prove entertaining and memorable, but fail to communicate their key information to the viewer. Brands like Cadbury's can get away with it, as due to their massive status and the fact that almost everyone is familiar with their products and distinctive purple branding, their adverts mainly serve to imaginatively re-assert their presence, not to communicate new information. However, information is the purpose of many a whacky, zany ad, a purpose which, unless the ad is handled cleverly it will almost certainly not achieve.   

The Fundamentals Of Typography

During the summer break I did very little of the design projects that I had set myself back in May. One useful design-related thing I did do was read a few design books. 

One which has directly helped me, in the few projects I did attempt, was Gavin Ambrose and Paul Harris's Fundamentals Of Typography. Definitely a worthwhile read for anyone with an interest in graphic design as a thorough understanding of type is a boon when executing a piece of design.

In the book is alot of useful basic stuff as well as interesting little pieces of type trivia, some of these facts that were new to me include: 

-The point size of a typeface measures the block that the letter would have originally been set in, not the letterform itself.

-An 'em' is equal to the point size of the type, an 'en' is half an 'em' whilst a 'hyphen' is a third of an 'em'. All these units of measurement are used for spacing, indents and dashes.

-The optimum length of a line of type (for readability and integrity of a block of text) can be found by multiplying the width of a lowercase alphabet written out in any given typeface by 1.5-2

-An 'italic' is a specially drawn, slanted version of a typeface whilst an 'oblique' is the standard typeface skewed to the right

-À This accent is a 'grave' Ą this accent is an 'ogonek' Ç and this accent 

is a 'cedilla'. 

 

New Designers

Back in sunny mid-July, my Final 2nd year project was exhibited at New Designers.

The whole thing was a great experience, it was the first time I'd had an opportunity for discussing my work and receiving feedback from industry professionals and potential employers; very worthwhile in  preparing for going into industry when the student bubble bursts.





The Concept

My brief was to create visuals which were inherently memorable in order for them to become a visual mnemonic that would help trigger the recall of a piece of information when pictured in the 'mind's eye'.

The postcards are sleeves, into which, the user would insert the written information alongside a short piece, written by them, connecting this information to the object depicted on the front of the postcard in whatever way they can.

The cards would then be displayed around the home, helping the user to gradually become familiar with these images and their accompanying info and eventually allow the simple, vibrantly coloured objects to become a memorable symbol that aids the recall of its designated information.

Visual Learning

As well as looking into visual memory for my professional project I have realised that a big part of it is going to be looking at visual learning.

Personally, I find I take in information better if there is a distinctive accompanying visual or even if the type is presented in an interesting way. I used to love illustrated encyclopaedias and visual dictionaries when I was young and can still recall the imagery in some of them and information alongside, like the illustration of the mountaineer holding up a cup and looking disappointed after the water to make his cup of tea boiled at 30 degrees because of the pressure at high-altitude.

Even though this is a pretty obscure piece of information which I will most likely never get a chance to use, I remembered it because of the weird expression on the guys face.

This is what I want to achieve in my visuals and I will therefore pay particular attention to the theory behind visual learning as well as memory and will study children's illustrated learning books heavily to find out what techniques they use that I can apply to my own project.

Development

It's coming up to the deadline of the PPRD unit now, for which this blog is going to count alot towards. I've been looking over it for a couple of days now, re-reading all my ramblings and realised that I have loads of planning and reflection (important parts of the unit) but not much talk of my development this year. At what is pretty much the halfway point of the year (give or take a few weeks) it's actually an ideal time to think about, with regard to this academic year, what I've improved on, what I could improve on and whether I've fulfilled previous goals I've set myself.

My development this year:

The most marked aspect of my development is my knowledge of the programs in creative suite. This is mostly because I now have my own mac with CS4 on and have been able to practise using flash, indesign, illustrator, dreamweaver and photoshop more. Although these programs are only tools with which to visually communicate, it helps ALOT if you know what you're doing with them as you can knock up ideas quicker and with much less stress.

I have also learned more about graphic design this year through having to create more graphic work as necessitated by the briefs we've been set. As a result of practicing it, I've found myself enjoying it more and personally think my design work has got better.

Owing to the fact that I now feel comfortable in graphic design, I find that I don't always turn to illustration in problem solving. Although I set out to be an illustrator and practise drawing whenever I could this year, I quickly realised that this would sometimes lead to visual solutions which did not address the needs outlined by the brief. Illustration is not the most appropriate medium to communicate everything and by cro-barring into often awkward and unsuitable projects, it only serves to diminish my own work.

That said I do need a specialism to carry forward.

I found that I actually enjoy drawing most when there is no really specific expectation of the outcome. Animal Farm was enjoyable because the brief was just; A2 portrait, something to do with animals. This allowed me to explore ideas in a really fun and free way and I ended up being happy with the result of my labour for the first time in a long time. With this in mind I am seriously thinking that illustration will not form the basis of my career as when working on briefs which are restrictive and narrow, illustration-for me anyway, is one of the most stressful things I do. This inevitably impacts on the work as well as being a big problem for me personally and I have no intention of entering a career that I don't enjoy for not alot of money.

I am thinking that, instead, I will pursue graphic design and maybe web design more and enjoy drawing as my hobby and possibly occasionally do freelance work.

So that's where I am at the moment. I am going to complete my professional project, which combines elements of both GD and illustration and decide on a more concrete route after this. This is turning into an essay so I am going to quickly sum up what I need to develop on.

I think I need to be more disciplined in my working day (I need to get up earlier and stay on task for longer without getting distracted). I need to return to reading books as research for projects. And finally I need to be more optimistic about my own work, I've found that as soon as I've finished something, I can't look at it and hate the sight of it. However, when I look back at it I find I appreciate it more and think of my current project, 'why can't it look more like that' and 'how come I've gotten worse at this'. I need to bear this in mind as it will allow me to keep a more positive attitude towards everything I do.

Professional Project Tweak

Since my provisional idea for my P.P is more about visual memory and learning than the thing which the audience is being taught (I had thought perhaps foreign phrases and other useful skills) I am considering changing it so that the book contains an arbitrary sequence of words or numbers. This would place the emphasis more on the visuals and the memory aspect rather than the information being memorised. I'm going to arrange a tutorial to get some guidance on this as it's pretty important that I get straight what I intend to do before I rush in and start work on it.

Sketchbook Work

I've gone through my sketchbooks and uploaded a few of the drawings and odd bits I've done in the last year to my flickr. There's a live feed on the right with a link to my account.

Animal Farm- Done.

Having made a profit to go towards our end of year show and received positive feedback from alot of the people who attended, the animal farm print auction can definitely go down as a success. As well as the money made and the good exposure for the course, it was also useful experience for putting on future events.

Personally, I was pretty chuffed to have sold a fair few prints and hear some nice stuff about my work.

Now I have to turn my attention to the next four projects; PPRD, D&AD, the essay and my professional project. I've got next week to finish PPRD and get something together for D&AD, after which I can really begin to put my energy and focus fully into the all important professional project, for which I have begun to put together my proposal.

I presented the idea I have started to formulate in front of the class today and was met with a few confused faces. I'm going to put this down to my presentation skills or lack thereof and the fact that the idea is quite difficult to explain.

Basically, I want to create a book or series of books which aim to teach the reader something through visuals. This obviously doesn't sound like a particularly new concept but the way I aim to go about it is..

If you remember compiling revision notes for exams (one of the massive benefits of art school is that this is a distant memory) you might remember being told to highlight key bits in different colours to create visual distinction amid the sea of samey handwriting and hopefully enable you to retain these coloured bits of information in your visual memory.

my idea is based on this principle and basically aims to break down useful things to know and (provisional ideas I had were how to change a tyre, how to bake bread and basic phrases in foreign languages) make it really easy for the reader to assimilate the key information through a series of vivid and distinctive graphics that carry the key points.

I want the images to really lodge in the mind's eye so to speak as my rationale is that this is one of the most effective ways of learning something. The emphasis is firmly on memorising this information rather than using these books as a manual/cookbook/phrasebook and I am interested in reading up about the psychology of learning and visual memory to get a bit of background into this area as it underpins what I will create.

I know I have to think about it further and refine the idea as whilst writing this I have noticed some flaws but I think it has the potential to be a really interesting project and a good vehicle with which I can create a body of varied and experimental work.

Animal Farm + PPRD2

I'm now fully over my food poisoning and have managed to get together a piece for the animal farm silent auction. Instead of trying to rush the 5 birds out of 10 I had left to draw in a day I have decided to just draw one puffin, but big. So with this simplified contingency I now just have to buy some nice coloured paper and trace the line drawing a few times and I'm done, it can be framed, put up in 60 million and hopefully bought by someone. Should be an awesome night for the course.

The course is at a bit of a strange juncture at the moment where we have several projects finishing (animal farm on wednesday, the PPRD deadline coming up and D&AD) but also some beginning; the all important professional project and the essay. I confess that I haven't really thought much about either of these and as such I'm gunna put in a brainstorming session tonight to get the ball rolling.

I've got a few more bits for PPRD to finish but I've also accrued some little bits I can submit for it during animal farm such as the temporary tattoos I designed and my various illustrations for it, alot of which I haven't used.

I also have a presentation layout on indesign which I have developed from the one I used at the PPRD crit so that I have a standard presentation sheet which I can use when sending work to clients. I have adapted this to A3 so I can also use it for my portfolio sheets and presenting larger work to clients. This is really useful as it will save time as well as providing me with a way of presenting my work in a uniform, professional way.

I am going to adapt this into an invoice design and use it as the basis for any other documents I will frequently need. I'm also thinking about possibly creating letterheads, comp slips and maybe a business card but only if I have time as it is unlikely I will need them just yet....

Im planning to go through my sketchbook work and scan and upload a selection of drawings to my flickr just to show some of the self initiated work I've done.

Don't buy inexpensive shellfish....

....if you're in the middle of an important, busy project with a fast approaching deadline or ever really. After 3 days of horrible, horrible food poisoning, getting my one-off illustration finished is going to be very much an uphill task and with the lack of screenprints, it unfortunately is not certain that I will have anything ready for animal farm.

Everything seems to have conspired against me getting any work up for our fundraiser.

However, I do have 4 and a half days to finish the piece (which sounds longer than it is) and though I feel about 92 years old (I haven't left my bed for three days) there are some changes I can make so that it is more time efficient and I will hopefully have some form of the illustration finished for the exhibition, barring any anvils falling on my head, the ebola virus or a surprise decision by parliament to criminalise the use of pencils.

D & AD

Some brilliant ideas came out at the first brainstorming session I had for D&AD today. I'm working in a group of three (Me, Jon and Mike) on the brief to design a campaign to publicise the new ikea catalogue (and persuade people to improve their homes with Ikea products) and we worked pretty well together, all having good individual ideas and contributing good input to those of others. We decided on an idea which we are going to take forward and develop which I'm confident is a pretty strong one.

This was after we filtered through a fair few others, none of which were actually bad, that didn't quite tick the many boxes needed to fulfil the brief; it had to encourage people to improve their homes, it had to be broad, it had to assume a non-aggresive voice yet be instant and direct, it had to be playful, cheeky and rebellious and hardest of all, considering Ikea's myriad quirky and original ad campaigns, be innovative and outside the box.

We now have a pretty clear plan as to what and how we will present this idea which I don't want to put up on here because I would shoot myself If I saw some nice young student walk away with a D&AD pencil having googled D&AD + Ikea, found this page and pillaged silly our idea. It's actually nice to have so much faith in an idea that I wont risk putting it up on this obscure, hardly-read blog.

Another Failed Screenprint

I think I was destined to never print the superhero image. Absolutely everything that could go wrong did in the process of trying to screenprint it. I will now always allow time for manual image tracing on illustrator when creating vectors as live trace just sometimes does not work. Also when screenprinting I will never forget that simplicity is absolutely integral in designing a successful print. You can't just use any old image for screenprinting, it has to take the amount of colours (the less the easier it will be) and the level of small detail (can't be too fine or it will break up) into consideration as well as more technical things like bleeds and layering.

Its a shame that the image I worked on for several days is now redundant but I did manage to livetrace one of the bluetits I had done and ready this for print tomorrow. I will also be working on a one off illustration with a load of different birds to be sold at the auction so all is not lost.

I also still have the image of the superheroes me and matt worked on which I am actually pretty pleased with. Other positive stuff to come out of the project was that I found I worked well collaboratively and I found that I enjoy making work with a sense of fun about it and may look to make more images like this.

Anyway, here's the digital version of the image in full colour;

Video Games As Inspiration

I think generally, alot of the public consider video games as a malevolent distraction for today's youth. To be fair, if you don't play (and therefore understand) video games, your only insight into the gaming world has probably been through other people who don't play games on the news clamouring for the latest controversial title to be banned, either that or maybe your brother, son or boyfriend is addicted to Call Of Duty and as a result is a cranky geek for 90% of the day and you therefore, quite understandably despise gaming in any form. However the games industry is now making more money than the film industry and with the arrival of more powerful machines with more realistic graphics (xbox 360, PS3) and the massively popular family orientated nintendo consoles (wii and ds), it is now an increasingly important form of entertainment and is starting to be taken more seriously as creative medium.

Games, like films, are art directed and in development, alot of thought is put into the design of the visuals. As with other forms of media subject to mass consumption, games are increasingly becoming part of our visual culture. Already retro games like pac-man and space invaders are parodied in the simpsons & family guy, their images adorn t-shirts and their influence is evident in a wide array of contemporary graphics (especially in gig and club night posters which often use the pac man typeface as an index of 80's style design).

There are also many current games notable for their distinctive visual styles. Two that I have recently played and thought were particularly memorable in terms of visuals are Canabalt, which you can view and play free online (it is probably the most simple and addictive game you will ever play) and Little Big Planet, a colourful, dreamlike platform adventure which you can play if you are privileged enough to own a PSP or PS3. Check out a trailer for the game here.

Really Boring Post...

Tutorial Research For SBC2.....



http://tv.adobe.com/watch/visual-design/using-indesign-export-to-flash-xfl

-Tutorial on exporting from indesign into flash.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081002141605AAoTFS4

-Playing a movieclip with as3.

http://bytes.com/topic/flash/answers/704967-how-apply-stroke-text-flash-cs3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKIMjuBREnY
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1312651&seqNum=20

-Placing a stroke on text in flash. Ended up not using any of these as the stroke didn't look too great, I instead typed the relevant words in illustrator with the stroke, created the vector shapes out of the words and pasted them into flash.

http://www.entheosweb.com/Flash/external_links.asp

-Hyperlinking in flash.

http://www.youtube.com/user/oppcell#p/a/9AE5F50F252486D3/2/-ak-I5rklqg

-Really youtube channel useful tutorials on the basics of building a flash website.


http://www.actionscript.org/forums/archive/index.php3/t-144951.html
http://groups.google.com/group/macromedia.flash/browse_thread/thread/a41b0290daf4c2ed

-Information on a compiler error message I got whilst testing the site.


http://www.texelate.co.uk/blog/should-you-make-your-website-in-flash/

-Some reading I did before deciding whether to make the site in flash.

http://www.ultrashock.com/forums/flash-professional/acceptable-file-size-for-a-flash-site-115584.html
http://animation.about.com/od/flashanimationtutorials/ss/flashbandwidthp.htm
http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/steps-faster-flash/2
http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/steps-faster-flash/2
http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/fast-track-flash-site/2

-Research I did after I realised my .swf was too big.

http://www.flashmagazine.com/Tutorials/detail/how_to_make_a_custom_as3_preloader/

-Tutorial on making a preloader animation.

http://d-graff.de/fricca/center.html

-css for centring .swf in dreamweaver.

http://www.kirupa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=162240
http://www.bigresource.com/FLASH-Skipping-ahead-a-set-amount-of-frames-rUyy6MUOSc.html#XUBBaY5AdP
http://www.adobe.com/livedocs/flash/9.0/ActionScriptLangRefV3/flash/display/MovieClip.html

-Actionscript to place on control buttons.


http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/setclientarea.html
http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/setclientarea.html
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread?t=600738
http://dustinbrewer.com/fonts-on-the-web-and-a-list-of-web-safe-fonts/
http://www.webdesigndev.com/web-development/16-gorgeous-web-safe-fonts-to-use-with-css

-Various reading on css which informed my decision to use flash.

Research For Screen Based 2

After basically (apart from hosting the site) having finished this project I've come back to my sketchbook which looks pretty bare and have realised I don't really have a lot to put in it. I did some research into vis com related sites right at the start of this project which I documented in a previous post here but other than that I haven't really got much to show.

I guess the main reason is that at the core of this project was my own visual identity which sort of came together quite organically, meaning it is hard to dissect, record and justify. The research that informed this was all kind of from introspective thought about myself and my work which lead to a more instinctive way of working. The rationalisation of the aesthetic decisions behind the identity is too esoteric to allow any other explanation than that; they just looked and felt right- apart from the use of coloured paper that is simply just cos I use it in my work.

I am also going to cite alot of the last years' websites as being important in the development of my own. I looked at all of them but continually revisited a set few (Luke Bonner's, Gareth Sanger's and James Mcmorrow's were the ones I took most from) when I needed to find out what sort of things people had written in their about sections, how much work they had up and what sort of size this should be. This was an incredibly valuable resource during the project as these designers created their sites when they were in exactly the same situation as me and the ability to see how well some handled the task, creating original, personal and well designed sites (while also showing the pitfalls which some fell into, some sites were too personal, too gimmicky and hard to get around) made for a good reference point.

On the technical side, tutorials were a life saver during this project. I've bookmarked all the ones I used and the list is too long too put on here. If you've ever posted anything to do with flash on the internet than thank you, you probably helped me at some point during my project.

I guess after all that, that I have done a substantial amount of research, just a different kind which is less sketchbook-friendly than the billions of print outs of other designers work used in previous projects. I could go back and tart-up my sketchbook, pretend I was inspired by stuff I never looked at and probably get a few more marks in the process but thats not really the point of being on the course, besides I've got animal superheroes to draw.

Illustrator Will Kemp

Checked out the new consortium shop today and found some pretty nice stuff, sweet tee-shirt graphics by Parra and other prohibitively expensive but awesome stuff. One of the reasons I used to love the old consortium shop was the various free magazines with loads of illustration and graphic inspiration so I was disappointed not to see any out. However those who don't ask don't get and they had some Carhartt brand book thingys behind the counter which I thought was being given to me but later saw a £4 price on the cover which leaves me in a situation whereby I am unsure whether I casually shoplifted (was it just to look at or for keeps? I will never know....)

Ah well, if I did they'll make it back x100 if they sell a jacket.

Anyway the point is the Carhartt book is awesome. Beautifully designed with some interesting stuff about their brand heritage (in-keeping with the current trend for reputable, well established companies visually returning to their roots, I didn't know they've been around since 1910) as well as some insightful interviews with their designers.

One of these really struck a chord. I found it pretty motivating and positive to read graphic illustrator Will Kemp talking about how jaded he was with uni work and how his work improved as he resolved to be more natural in his approach to work.

I also got into visual communication at a young age because of skateboard graphics (and football kits) and similarly think that alot of people at the AUCB are pretentious sods who spend far too much time worrying about their haircuts.

Read the interview here and check out his clothing label Second Son.

Website Setback

I have my website as a published SWF file now, everything is in working order, I've checked it and checked it again, sorted the annoying smoothing that flash decided it should put on all my images and (apart from the italic text which, strangely, looks alot more slanty in flash than it did in indesign for some reason) I am pretty pleased with what I've produced. I've got a domain name now (which I need to figure out how to use) and a pdf CV sorted so I was pretty pleased with myself until I decided I should research what a standard size is for a flash site....

I read a forum post in which a guy in a very similar situation to mine (first website, file size of around 3mb) was told his site was ''waaaaaaay too big''. I also found a feature on flash called bandwidth profiler which simulates the download of the site at various connection speeds. I don't even want to write how long it took at dialup speed and though no-one has dialup anymore, even I couldn't be bothered to wait for it to download on DSL I actually, without thinking about it, closed the site and went on something else!

This is really annoying but not a catastrophe as I can do some stuff to streamline the file and if that doesn't work then there seems to be a method involving splitting the site into separate movies so the user doesn't have to load it all at once (annoying though cos navigation will be slowed) then there is the option of some kind of loading graphic so all is not lost, just scattered into a lot of small pieces...

New Year's Resolutions

As well as not eating red meat or junk food, I have a few changes I want to make about the way I make work. I've been thinking about it during the christmas break and I feel at the moment like drawing and designing is becoming a stressful chore that I find myself trying to avoid. I feel like I am constantly trying to create what I think other people will like rather than the kind of stuff I like myself. This is why I haven't developed a strong personal style. Also I have too much of a binary view of my work, I have a few bits I definitely like whilst everything else I consider a complete failure, there is no middle ground between me not being able to look at a piece and wanting to put it up on my wall.

I also feel like I am personally being judged by everything I produce which makes the process of working really stressful and actually conducive to making work which all too often plays it safe and is too self aware.

My goal therefore is to try and be more free in my work, imparting more of myself in the work I produce. I have alot of ideas which don't make it out of my head because I'm unsure as to how they will go down so I will try to exorcise these abit more.

I've finished my website now, which I'm pretty pleased with and am going to use as a starting point for a general improvement in the work I produce. I'm going to make a start tomorrow with the screenprints for the postcards exhibition.

Happy 2010!